Strongest Force: Thanks, blueofnoon, for your report. Hou is very very mature for her age; and, she is not just "GM strength" anymore, she is a real GM! Her 13 games from this tournament is easily a grandmaster performance. She will be women's world champ some day and she will most-likely be over 2600 by the end of 2008!

notyetagm: I just realized that Gupta won the 2008 World Junior Championship title by winning all 5(!) of his last games. Wow. What a money player, reminiscent of Dr. Lasker's great finishes.

With the title on the line after round 8, Gupta went on a five-game winning streak(!) in rounds 9 thru 13 (5/5!) to win the tournament.

He seemed to come out of nowhere. I followed this event closely and wondered where in the world this Gupta guy was coming from. He suffered two losses earlier on but finished with that incredible 5/5 to take the title.

Prugno: No offence meant to Gupta, who is clearly a great figher, but in these days where chess events keep having less and less rounds (even the Olympiads now!), one of the few tournaments which is still as long as it used to be a few decades ago would probably have had a more deserving winner if it had ended one or two rounds earlier!

PhilFeeley: <Prugno: "a more deserving winner"> What's that supposed to mean? As far as I'm concerned, everybody in the top 20 had an equal chance to win and all deserved to. I don't think you can now say someone else "deserved" it more than Gupta.

notyetagm: <PhilFeeley: <Prugno: "a more deserving winner"> What's that supposed to mean? As far as I'm concerned, everybody in the top 20 had an equal chance to win and all deserved to. I don't think you can now say someone else "deserved" it more than Gupta.>

Yes, I do not understand that comment either. Gupta went <5/5(!!!)> in the last five rounds of the tournament, when the pressure was greatest and the games counted the most.

Also consider that Gupta beat both Braun and Howell in the last two rounds, the earlier leaders who I suppose you consider "more deserving".

Prugno: I understand the above points, but it can't be denied that, not having been in the top boards very often, Gupta played less games with the other front-runners than Howell, Braun, Rodstein, So, etc., who hit their best form in the first rounds rather than in the last few. And indeed his Buholz tiebreaks are not so high, although luckily he didn't need them!

All this regularly happens in big and balanced Swiss events, anyway, so I perfectly agree with <Phil Feeley> that any of the top 20 (or maybe 15?) finishers would have been a deserving winner. I was just noting the paradox which led to a longer tournament producing a surprise result more typically associated with shorter events.

tsj2000: Dear Prugno, before making such worthless comments, just have a look at the Final round game against Howell with Black pieces, to realise how talented and deserving Abhijit Gupta as World Junior Chess Champion.

adair10: Gupta won deservedly, Just because he was less known before the tournament than his compatriot Negi or other favorites does not mean his win is some kind of surprise or fluke. There are a lot of very talented youngsters around that don't play much, therefore we don't know about them. Gupta is one of them. Good luck to Gupta in Essen later this year.

Prugno: Dear tsj 2000, please note that it is possible to have differences of opinion without insulting the other person's comments and calling them "worthless".

In any case, I never implied Gupta was a weak chess player (which would maek no sense at all, given his great results); in fact I have looked at some of his games and admire his style.

However, with or without your permission, I stick to my prediction that Gupta will have a less brilliant chess career than that of other players who finished below him here (Hou Yifan, So, Howell, Negi, and perhaps others too); and it is curious that in a shorter tournament this upset would not have happened.

euripides: With all respect to David Howell, I would think he has had more opportunity to display his talents so far than Gupta. Hou Yifan is another matter - I imagine she is currently running above Magnus Carlsen's trajectory at the same age.

notyetagm: <euripides: With all respect to David Howell, I would think he has had more opportunity to display his talents so far than Gupta. Hou Yifan is another matter - I imagine she is currently running above Magnus Carlsen's trajectory at the same age.>

Well Gupta will get a chance to show us what he is made of when he gets the invite for the Essen tournament this fall.

Surely he cannot do as badly as Andriasian did, with his winless, drawless 0/6.

visayanpatzer: Dear chessgames.com ...hope it's not too late for this...someone seems to have confused the identities of Jayaram Ashwin of India and Julijan Plenca of Croatia. In the list of players Ashwin appears twice: first, right after David Howell, and then between Sahaj Grover and Vinicius Tine Martins.

Then too, while each player should have played 13 games, the database shows 22 games by Ashwin and only 4 by Plenca.

I'm quite sure some kind of computer glitch was responsible for this unfortunate misrepresentation. I do hope you can still do something about it. Thanks much!

dramas79: <I stick to my prediction that Gupta will have a less brilliant chess career than that of other players who finished below him here (Hou Yifan, So, Howell, Negi, and perhaps others too); and it is curious that in a shorter tournament this upset would not have happened.> I suppose people said the same about Tal too who had a similar style. This is just an observation, nothing else and I am not equating Gupta to Tal(before someone takes a deep breath and flames me for comparing Gupta to Tal).

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